When I was asked about past lives, it was difficult for me to hide my disbelief. That's what I thought until the time I met Diana Denhol, an attractive personality and a psychiatrist who can convince people with ease.
In her practice, she used hypnosis - at first in order to help people get out of the habit of smoking, lose weight and even find lost objects. “But sometimes something unusual happened,” she told me. At times, some patients talked about their past life experiences.
This mostly happened when she was leading people back through life so that they could relive some traumatic events that they had already forgotten, a process called "early life regression therapy."
This method helped to locate the source of fears or neuroses that disturbed patients in the present. The task was to lead a person back through life, "peeling" it layer by layer in order to reveal the causes of mental trauma, similar to how archaeologists clean off layer by layer, each of which was put off during a certain historical period in order to unearth the ruins on archaeological site.
But sometimes patients in some incredible way went much further into the past than could possibly have been possible. Suddenly they began to talk about another life, place, time, while as if they were seeing everything that was happening with their own eyes.
Cases of this kind were repeatedly encountered in the practice of Diana Denhol when conducting hypnotic regression. At first, such experiences of patients scared her, she looked for her mistakes in hypnotherapy or believed that she was dealing with a patient who suffers from a split personality. But when these cases were repeated over and over, she realized that such experiences could be used to treat patients.
Investigating the phenomenon, over time she learned to evoke memories of past lives in people who agreed to it. Now, in her medical practice, she constantly uses regression, which brings the patient directly to the heart of the problem, often significantly shortening the duration of treatment.
I have always believed that each of us is a subject of experiments for ourselves, and therefore I wanted to experience regression in past lives myself. I shared my intentions with Diana, and she generously invited me to start the experiment that afternoon. She sat me down in an easy chair, gradually, with great skill, brought me into a deep trance.
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Then she said that I was in a trance state for about an hour. I always remembered that I was Raymond Moody and was under the supervision of a skilled psychotherapist. In this trance, I visited 9 stages of the development of civilization and saw myself and the world around me in different incarnations. And now I do not know what they could mean and whether they meant anything at all.
I know for sure only one thing - it was an amazing sensation, more like reality than a dream. The colors were the same as they are in reality, the actions developed in accordance with the internal logic of events, and not the way I "wanted". I didn’t think, "Now this is going to happen." Or: "The plot should develop this way." These real lives developed on their own, like the plot of a film on the screen.
I will now describe, in chronological order, the lives I went through with the help of Diana Denhol.
First past life
In the jungle
In my first life I was a primitive man - some kind of prehistoric species of man. A completely confident creature that lived in the trees. So, I lived comfortably among the branches and leaves and looked much more human than one could imagine. By no means was I a great ape.
I did not live alone, but in a group of beings like me. We lived together in nest-like structures. During the construction of these "houses" we helped each other and tried in every possible way to make sure that we could walk to each other, for which we made reliable flooring. We did this not only for safety, we realized that it was better and more convenient for us to live in a group.
Perhaps we have already climbed the evolutionary ladder. We communicated with each other, directly expressing our emotions. Instead of speech, we used gestures with which we showed what we feel and what we need. I remember we ate fruit.
I clearly see myself eating some kind of fruit I don't know now. It is juicy, it contains a lot of small red seeds. Everything was so real that it seemed to me as if I was eating this fruit right in the hypnosis session. I even felt the juice dripping down my chin as I chewed.
Second past life
Primitive Africa
In this life I saw myself as a 12-year-old boy living in a community in a tropical prehistoric forest - a place of unusual, alien beauty. Judging by the fact that we were all blacks, I decided that this was happening in Africa.
At the beginning of this hypnotic adventure, I saw myself in the forest, on the shore of a calm lake. I was looking at something in the white clean sand. Around the village a sparse tropical forest rose, thickening on the surrounding hills. The huts we lived in were on thick piles, their floor raised about 60 cm above the ground. The walls of the houses were woven of straw, and inside there was only one, but a large, quadrangular room.
I knew that my father was fishing with everyone in one of the fishing boats, and my mother was doing something nearby on the shore. I did not see them, I just knew that they were close and felt safe.
Third past life
Master shipbuilder capsized in boat
In my next life, I saw myself as a muscular old man, with blue eyes and a long silver beard. Despite my old age, I still worked in the workshop where boats were built.
The workshop was a long structure overlooking a large river, while from the side of the river it was completely open.
There were stacks of planks and thick, heavy logs in the room. Primitive tools were hung on the walls and scattered about on the floor. Apparently, I was living out my last days. My 3-year-old shy granddaughter was with me. I told her what each tool was needed for, and showed her how to work with them on the newly finished boat, while she peered fearfully from behind the side of the boat.
That day I took my granddaughter and went out with her for a boat ride. We were enjoying the calm flow of the river when suddenly high waves rose and capsized our boat. My granddaughter and I were blown away by water in different directions. I fought against the current, struggling to grab my granddaughter, but the elements were faster and stronger than me. In powerless despair, I watched as the baby was drowning and I stopped fighting for my life. I remember drowning in guilt. After all, it was I who started the walk in which my beloved granddaughter found her death.
Fourth past life
Terrible mammoth hunter
In the next version, I was with people who hunted a shaggy mammoth with a desperate passion. As a rule, I did not notice that I was particularly gluttonous, but at that time no smaller game would satisfy my appetite. In a state of hypnosis, I nevertheless noticed that all of us were by no means well-fed and we really needed food.
Animal skins were thrown over us, so that they covered only the shoulders and chest. They did little to protect us from the cold and barely covered our genitals at all. But this did not bother us at all - when we fought the mammoth, we forgot about the cold and decency. There were six of us in a small gorge, we threw stones and sticks at the mammoth.
The mammoth was able to grab one of my tribesmen with its trunk and crush his skull with one precise and strong movement. The rest were horrified.
Fifth Past Life
A grandiose construction of the past
Fortunately, I moved on. Now I found myself in the middle of a huge construction site, which occupied masses of people, in the historical setting of the beginning of civilization. In this dream, I was not a king, or even a monk, but only one of the workers. I think that we were building an aqueduct or a network of roads, but I'm not sure about this, because from the place where I was, it was impossible to see the whole panorama of the construction.
We workers lived in rows of white stone houses with grass growing between them. I lived with my wife, it seemed to me that I have been living here for many years, because the place was very familiar. In our room there was a dais on which we lay.
I was very hungry, and my wife was literally dying of malnutrition. She lay quietly, emaciated, emaciated, and waited for her life to fade away. She had coal-black hair and prominent cheekbones. I felt like we had a good life together, but malnutrition dulled our senses.
Sixth Past Life
Thrown to the lions
Finally, I found myself in a civilization that I could recognize - in Ancient Rome. Unfortunately, I was neither an emperor nor an aristocrat. I was in the lion's pit waiting for the lion to bite off my hand for fun.
I watched myself from the side. I had long fiery red hair and a mustache. I was very thin and was wearing only short leather pants. I knew my origin - I came from the area that is now called Germany, where I was captured by the Roman legionaries in one of their military campaigns. The Romans used me as a bearer of plundered wealth. Having delivered their cargo to Rome, I had to die for their entertainment.
I saw myself looking up at the people who surrounded the pit. Probably, I asked them for mercy, because a hungry lion was waiting outside the door next to me. I felt his strength and heard the roar he gave out in anticipation of the meal.
I knew it was impossible to escape, but when the door to the lion was opened, the instinct of self-preservation made me look for a way out. The point of view at that moment changed, I found myself in this body of mine. I heard the grating raised and saw the lion walking towards me. I tried to defend myself by raising my hands, but the lion rushed at me without even noticing them. To the delight of the audience, who screamed with delight, the animal knocked me down and pinned me to the ground.
The last thing I remember is how I lie between the paws of the lion, and the lion is about to crush my skull with its powerful jaws.
Seventh Past Life
Refinement to the end
My next life was the life of an aristocrat, and at the same time again in Ancient Rome. I lived in beautiful, spacious rooms, flooded with a pleasant twilight light, spreading a yellowish glow around me. I was reclining in a white toga on a couch shaped like a modern chaise longue.
I was about 40 years old and had the tummy and smooth skin of a man who had never done hard physical labor. I remember the feeling of satisfaction with which I lay and looked at my son. He was 15 years old, wavy, dark, cropped hair beautifully framed his frightened face.
"Father, why are these people coming to us?" he asked me.
“My son,” I replied. "We have soldiers for that."
“But, Dad, there are a lot of them,” he objected.
He was so terrified that I decided to get up, rather out of curiosity, to see what he was talking about. I went out to the balcony and saw a handful of Roman soldiers trying to stop a huge, excited crowd. I immediately realized that my son's fear was not unreasonable. Looking at my son, I realized that unexpected fright can be read on my face.
These were the last scenes from that life. From what I felt when I saw the crowd, that was the end of it.
Eighth past life
Death in the desert
In the next version, I found myself in a mountainous area somewhere in the deserts of the Middle East. I was a merchant. I had a house on a hill, and at the foot of that hill was my shop. In it I bought and sold jewelry.
I sat there all day and appraised gold, silver and gems. But my home was my pride. It was a beautiful red-brick building with a covered gallery for cool evening hours. The back wall of the house rested on a rock - it had no backyard.
The windows of all the rooms overlooked the façade, from them a view of the distant mountains and river valleys seemed to be something especially amazing in the middle of the desert landscape.
Once, returning home, I noticed that the house was unusually quiet. I entered the house and began to move from one empty room to another. I was getting scared. Finally I went into our bedroom and found my wife and three of our children killed. I don't know exactly how they were killed, but judging by the amount of blood, they were stabbed to death.
Ninth Past Life
Chinese artist
In my last life I was an artist and a woman at the same time. The first thing I remember is myself at the age of six and my younger brother. Our parents took us for a walk to the majestic waterfall. The path led us to granite rocks, from the cracks in which water was breaking through, feeding the falls.
We stood still and watched as the water cascaded and then fell into a deep crevice. It was a short snippet. The next one related to the moment of my death.
I became impoverished and lived in a small house built on the backs of wealthy houses. It was a very comfortable accommodation. On that last day of my life, I was lying in bed and sleeping, when a young man entered the house and strangled me.
Just. He took nothing from my things. He wanted something that was of no value to him - my life.
This is how it was. 9 lives, and in one hour my opinion about past life regression completely changed. Diana Denhol gently pulled me out of my hypnotic trance. I realized that regression is not a dream or a dream. I learned a lot in these visions. When I saw them, I would rather remember than invent.
But there was something in them that is not in ordinary memory. Namely: in a state of regression, I could see myself from different points of view. Several terrible moments in the lion's mouth I spent outside myself, observing events from the side. But at the same time I remained there, in the pit. The same thing happened when I was a shipbuilder. For some time I watched myself, how I make a boat, from the sidelines, the next moment for no reason, without controlling the situation, I again found myself in the body of an old man and saw the world through the eyes of an old master.
Moving the point of view was something mysterious. But everything else was just as mysterious. Where did the “visions” come from? When all this was happening, I was not in the least interested in history. Why did I go through different historical periods, some of them getting to know and others not? Were they genuine, or have I somehow caused them to appear in my own mind?
My own regressions also haunted me. I never expected to see myself in a past life, entering a state of hypnosis. Even assuming that I would see something, I did not expect that I would not be able to explain it.
But those 9 lives that surfaced in my memory under the influence of hypnosis greatly surprised me. Most of them took place in times that I have never read or watched films about.
And in each of them I was an ordinary person, not distinguished by anything. This completely shattered my theory that in a past life everyone sees himself as Cleopatra or another brilliant historical figure. A few days after the regression, I admitted that this phenomenon was a mystery to me.
The only way to solve this riddle (or at least try to solve it) I saw in the organization of scientific research, in which regressions would be dissected into separate elements and each of them was carefully analyzed.
Raymond Moody